The prior art teaches numerous processes for making low-moisture food products from cereal flour, water and/or milk.
The (USDA) teaches a process for making low moisture (20%-30% moisture) fat-fried rice fries from rice flour and water. Published in the Journal of Food Science Vol. 66 No. 4, 2001 page. 610, said article teaches a process whereby rice flour and a small amount of water are blended together and extruded through a high-shear, fast-rotating, screw-type extruder to form rice fries strands, which are then fat-fried. The referenced USDA article further states that with the USDA process, higher levels of moisture cannot be used because it makes the extruded rice flour/water strands become so fluid that they are not able to retain a formed shape.
There are several prior art Zukerman et al patents that teach processes for making Shaped Grain Products that look, taste and have “visible, cooked grain-textures” and appearances. This is because they all utilize visible cereal grains as a raw material in order to make the finished products comprised of individual, cooked visible cereal grains that are joined to each other. Also, the cooking process used to make the prior art Zukerman et al visible grain textured products requires process equipment that is able to cook the individual raw cereal grains for a much longer period of time because when cooking raw visible cereal grains, the fluid has to be infused from the surface of the grains into their centers.
The products of the present invention are in sharp contrast to the Zukerman prior art patents because said present invention products are made from finely milled cereal flour which produces finished products comprised of fluid-milk hydrated, starch-complexed cereal flour having smooth, homogeneous-consistency textures and appearances. The products of the present invention are also made by a very rapid cooking process because cereal flour is a finely milled powder which is able to absorb hot water and/or hot fluid-milk very rapidly, even instantaneously.
In the prior art, the traditional dry cereal and fluid-milk breakfast is made by combining about one ounce of the RTE (ready-to-eat) low-density cereal pieces (which are made from cereal flour) together with about four ounces of fluid-milk to make a “fluid-combination” that has to be eaten from a bowl with a spoon. Consumers who pick-up breakfast “on-the-go” are now avoiding the traditional bowl of dry cereal and fluid-milk because it is impossible to eat a “fluid-combination” in a moving car. For that reason, dry and intermediate-moisture cereal bars and cereal and milk bars which are made by processes that are well known in the prior art, are now being used as snacks or as a replacement for the traditional bowl of cereal and fluid-milk. The problem is that in order for these prior art dry and intermediate moisture cereal bar products to have their shelf-stable properties which prevent the products from spoiling, they are required to use preservation systems that cannot support the use of high levels of moisture. Therefore, dry and intermediate moisture prior art products cannot be made with high levels of water or with the same amount of fluid-milk as in a traditional cereal and fluid-milk combination. To be more specific, dry cereal bars and cereal and milk bars have a very-dry taste and texture because they contain less than 10% moisture. Intermediate moisture (shelf-stable) cereal bars, sport bars, diet bars and cereal & milk bars are required to be formulated with less than about 35% moisture because higher moisture levels will greatly increase the products' water activity which will in turn cause the products to spoil. For that reason, intermediate moisture cereal bars are usually formulated with glycerin, corn syrups and sugar syrups which provide the products' with soft-moist textures, high levels of soluble solids and water activity (Aw) below 0.75. For that reason, they taste like the added glycerin and corn syrup they are made with. They do not taste like a traditional cereal and fluid-milk combination.